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Sauce

Veloute Sauce

A clear stock-based sauce made from veal, vegetables, and a roux of flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Veloute Sauce

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Veloute Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Cover the veal with water and season with salt.

  2. Boil and skim well.

  3. Add the carrot, onion, parsley, leeks, celery, and peppercorns.

  4. Cover and boil slowly for 2 hours.

  5. Skim off the fat and strain the stock through a damp cloth.

Make the sauce

  1. In another saucepan, mix the flour with the butter, stir, and cook without browning.

  2. Add the stock and boil slowly for 30 minutes.

  3. Skim and strain through a napkin.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Leek + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce by swelling and gelatinising when heated with fat and liquid.
Butter
Forms the fat base with the flour, carrying flavour and giving the sauce a rich mouthfeel.
Veal knuckle
Releases gelatin and savoury flavour into the stock during long simmering, giving body to the sauce.
Chicken trimmings or fowl
Adds poultry flavour and gelatin to the stock during simmering.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour and butter without browning. The roux must be cooked gently enough to thicken without colouring. Browning changes the flavour and colour of a velouté, and undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste, so the roux should stay pale and cook briefly before the stock is added.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, chicken, carrot, onion, parsley, leek, celery):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, chicken, carrot, onion, parsley, leek, celery. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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